


A Tough Pill to Swallow

by MartianSnail



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Banner-centric, Bruce Banner/Tony Stark if you squint - Freeform, Hurt Bruce, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Science Bros, and tilt your head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 17:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MartianSnail/pseuds/MartianSnail
Summary: Bruce doesn't want to hurt anyone. Like, he really does not even want them to get paper-cuts. What happens when he tries to help them by knowingly putting himself at risk?





	A Tough Pill to Swallow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My Wonderful Sister who I Love Despite her Hairy Legs](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+Wonderful+Sister+who+I+Love+Despite+her+Hairy+Legs).



> AAAHHH!!! This is my first fic, ever. But I hope You guys like it! I wrote it because, in my opinion, there are never enough Science Bros fics and I live for Bruce angst. It's little short but there are shorter ones out there. Thanks for reading this far! Also if you see any grammatical errors or anything wrong in here please comment. Thanks again!

‘Everything is good. Yeah, totally fine. No way this could go wrong.’

These were the traitorous thoughts of Bruce as he worked on a Hulk-suppressant pill. In theory, in the event he got a minor injury, like a paper-cut or a stubbed toe, if he took a pill at least an hour prior, Bruce wouldn’t Hulk-out. He’s been working on this for at least a month and today was the day, the day he would get to finally test it out. 

Bruce’s hands trembled from excitement. Can’t really blame him though. He is basically holding the solution to all his social problems in one hand. Slowly, he placed it one his tongue and gulped down some water from his water bottle. 

Of course, as an ever loyal follower of the scientific method, Bruce begins to jot down side-effects in his messy notebook. The only reason he’s ever regarded as a clean person is because he’s only ever compared with Tony. In reality, the fact that he is even considered literate, with his chicken-scratch and all, is a wonder.

Every five minutes Bruce scribbles something, using his incomprehensible handwriting, in his notebook. In the meantime, he catches up with ‘The Good Doctor’ on his custom made indestructible Stark Pad, internally criticizing the doctors on the show.

There’s a loud thud upstairs, followed by a yell.

“The hell was that?!” Bruce yelps, startled. He practically jumps out of his chair and leaps up the steps. Somewhere along the way from the lab to the living area, Bruce missteps and falls. His ears are filled with two loud cracks and a roar. Bruce realizes, it’s the other guy’s roar.

Then, darkness. How long? Who knows. A second? A day? Bruce doesn’t really care.

……………………..

In the end, it’s not the fussing of the medical staff, the injections, the beeping of the monitor, or the Avengers, his friends, yelling outside his door, that wakes Bruce up. No, it’s a few hours later when Tony walks in.

Bruce hears the door creak and light footsteps. He opens his eyes just enough to see Tony’s blurred face.

“Tony? God, what kind of drugs am I on to have this bad of a headache?”

“Bruce? You’re awake,” he whisper-screams, “I thought you were going to sleep till next Sunday. And to answer your question, fentanyl, with a dosage for an obese elephant.” Bruce simply groans, hoping that it’s an acceptable answer. Then he remembers what happened earlier to land him here. Hulk’s roar. 

“Who did I hurt this time?”

Tony looks puzzled for a moment then it dawns on him that the Hulk was mysteriously nowhere to be seen despite Bruce’s condition. Not like he’s hard to miss him.

“Wait. What? Bruce, you do know that the Hulk didn’t make a surprise appearance? What’s up with that? Are you okay? Did something happen?! My God, are you sic-”

“Jesus Tony! I’m fine. It’s just this new drug I’m making to help suppress the Hulk when I get minor injuries. I thought I heard his roar before I passed out. I’m good so calm down.”

“I don’t know about you, but that broken leg don’t look all that minor to me.”

“Anyways, I think I remember someone yelling upstairs. It’s why I was running up the stairs. What was that?”

Tony chuckles for a moment before explaining. “Well, Clint pranked Natasha by taking out all the shampoo in her bottle and switching it with lube. Obviously, he must have momentarily forgot who Natasha is and was reminded when she marched in during lunch and held Clint by his legs while standing on the fridge and threatening to tattoo, ‘i am ilitrat,’ on his ass in the middle of the night. He promptly apologized and was dropped on his face.”

Bruce couldn’t help the laugh that he was desperately trying to supress. “But back to this ‘Hulk-suppressant’ thing. Please tell me don’t plan to use it regularly. Because if someone did something and you couldn’t protect yourself because of some stupid pill that wouldn’t be very fun.”

“Yeah, but Tony, I don’t wanna hurt anyone here. I care about you guys. I can take the fall.”

For a moment he is silent. If Bruce thought he’d seen Tony angry before, he was wrong. “What the actual fuck Bruce! I thought you were the smart one? Don’t you realize that if you got hurt because you can’t turn into the Hulk it would really hurt us? Me?”

Bruce’s cheeks were starting to grow red with shame. He knew that it was a little ‘self-sacrificy’ of him but he never expected Tony to be this mad. 

“I just thought that it would be helpful if I didn’t accidently Hulk-out and hurt one of you guys.”

“That’s different. You can’t control that. But you can control this whole, ‘take one for the  
team,’ bullshit. It won’t save us any grief.” Tony all but shouted.

“Shit, Tony. I didn’t know you car- you would feel so hurt.”

“Look, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I know you probably want me to leave, but just- just promise you won’t try anything stupid, okay? I mean, we’d all feel like asses if you got hurt by someone and couldn’t protect yourself and we weren’t there and- and...”

“Sure, I’ll tone down the drug. I’m sorry Tony. I didn’t mean to open this can of worms. I’m sorry.”

Tony looked a little regretful about his outburst as he tried desperately to maintain eye-contact with Bruce.  
"It's alright. You're fine so it's all good." He tried to smile at Bruce but it was awkward at best.

“Right then, get some rest Bruce. I’m sorry for shouting, I’ll leave now. We’ll talk more about this later though.”

Tony slowly walked over to the door and turned the knob.

“Tony, it’s fine. We’ll figure it out with this Hulk-thing. We’re good right?”

Now, Tony honestly smiled as he walked over and hugged Bruce tight.


End file.
